Stealing Beauty: Maggie Kayne

It's not long after we're greeted at Maggie Kayne's door by French bulldogs Gemma and Garbanzo that we notice her Il Pellicano ashtray--a souvenir from a family vacation to Tuscany. The gallerist decides to come clean: "I have a problem," she reveals, nodding to the trophy from the luxe Porto Ercole boutique hotel. "I have an obsession with stealing good European ashtrays." Given the home tour we'll experience, this news is unsurprising. Not because Kayne strikes us as the sticky fingers type (on the contrary). But because the curation of the airy residence she shares with her boyfriend, conceptual artist Aaron Sandnes, shares equal space with bold-faced art names as it does with less expected treasures.

ASTROLOGICAL INFLUENCEThough Kayne insists the white walls are an astrological side-effect rather than a white cube affect ("It's a commitment issue--I'm a Gemini," she says of the non-colour), they allow her legendary collection to shine. An untitled Thomas Hirschhorn collage starring Claudia Schiffer shares space with Ed Ruscha's hypercolor Mr. Ray lithograph, a John Baldessari collage from his "Intersection" series, and Sandnes' own drawing 100 (a birthday gift for Kayne). And don't forget the Henri Cartier-Bresson photograph in the bathroom. "There's a lot of really nice things here, but it's very casual," she insists, sinking into her perfectly beat-up leather Borge Mogensen sofa as a case-in-point.

ALLOW US TO ELABORATE It's the personal touches juxtaposed with her museum-worthy pieces that coin the space's relaxed vibe. There's the Burmese blanket, snagged for five dollars on vacation; the bamboo-base coffee table, discovered at a New York flea market; the handcrafted wood coasters, sourced at a tiny airport in Argentina; and the swirling scraps framed on her night table--­castoffs from artist friend Oliver Arms' works-in-progress that have been repurposed as found art.

MERGING ASSETS In the living room, Sandnes' Native American-inspired blanket from men's store General Quarters plays the perfect accent to Kayne's graphic Jiro Takamatsu acrylic painting; and an extraterrestrial-looking ceramic by Sandnes' father anoints Kayne's beloved DM/DM coffee table, one of several she commissioned from her good friend, furniture-maker Doug McCollough. "The top is sandblasted wood so it's this amazing sensation to touch it," she says. "Everyone who comes over here looks like they're tripping on ecstasy because they just can't stop petting it." Of course, not everything in the house is so hands-on--after all, that plastic laminate wood shelf with the bobble-head owl and the dog chews? That's an installation by noted Israeli readymade artist Haim Steinbach.